If Coulson hadn’t quit today then Blair’s testimony would have been the biggest news of the day.

However, one point on Blair. Put Iraq to one side and there was something slightly odd about his outfit today. He copied the current Prime Minister’s current neckwear obsession, going for a dark blue tie with white shirt and dark-blue suit. This is identical to the get-up Cameron has favored, day after day, for weeks now. The Cameroons are likely to see Blair’s choice of tie as a serious tribute from the man they respect as the inventor of New Labour, expert triangulator and deployer of “emotional intelligence” in the field of winning elections.

I have written about the dominance of the single color tie in the political class. It has become an orthodoxy.

Incidentally, and I presume it wasn’t coordinated with Blair, but Cameron actually chose today to revert to another single color tie—his pale blue number that hasn’t been seen for many weeks.